Jagiellonian University in the 20th century : state of research in the last two decades, challenges and research perspectives

The present article highlights the changing realities and methods of research on the history of academic institutions, with a particular focus on the Jagiellonian University in the 20th century. It is not only the great number of new sources, as well as research questions and applied methodologies differing from the ones employed in the past, but also diversified social needs. A group monograph by Andrzej Kazimierz Banach, Julian Dybiec and Krzysztof Stopka published in 2000 summarises the state of research in the late 1990s in an accessible manner, nonetheless the need has arisen to publish a new perspective on the history of the Jagiellonian University in corpore, and especially throughout the last century. The research conducted in the last two decades points towards the big, yet irregular growth of knowledge on the history of the oldest Polish university in the difficult 20th century. The authors attempted to take a look at the historiographic output from over two last decades, pointing out certain irregularities in the discussed issues as well as highlighting certain gaps, which require a closer attention of the future researchers of the Jagiellonian University's history.